Movies

The Time Travelers (1964) Directed by Ib Melchior, whose contribution to fantastic film ranges from Reptilicus to Deathrace 2000. This is another one I can't believe I missed out on for all these years. An experiment strands three scientists and their comedy relief assistant in the post-apocalyptic future of 2071, when the last unmutated humans, aided by their android robots, are desperately building a spaceship to Alpha Centauri. Standing the dictum, "a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," on its head, stage magic and sleight of hand tricks are used to depict advanced technology, like the removal and replacement of an android head in one unedited shot. I always enjoyed similar films, like Beyond the Time Barrier and World Without End, though they left me vaguely unsatisfied in their conclusion, but The Time Travelers extends its unique and extremely imaginative ideas to an amazing finale. Low-budget and deliberately silly at times it is also very colorful, and I cannot stress how important that is to me, especially in this modern age when advanced cinematic technology is used to make mediocre films look "serious" by dulling them down to muddy browns and greens, or creating "futuristic" effects (as in the soon-to-be-released Tron movie) which closely resemble archaic two-strip technicolor. For me this was an entirely enjoyable 10/10.